Peak NBA Statline Projection (PNSP) is a model used to project NBA success for college basketball players based upon their individual and team college basketball statistics, physical measurements, high school scouting rankings, and college basketball experience. The Peak NBA Statline Projection model returns a single rating value from 0 to 100. A higher rating value indicates a “better” NBA prospect. We provide a more detailed article outlining how PNSP is formulated here. Below are a few highlights of PNSP’s ratings for the 2016 NBA Draft Class, as well as a full list of PNSP’s top 20 players of the class.
Highlights
Henry Ellenson is ranked extremely high by PNSP’s rating system. This is driven by Ellenson’s extremely productive offensive statistics at the power forward position and PNSP’s deficiency in properly capturing defensive contribution in today’s NBA. With that said, a rating this high suggests Ellenson should have been taken well before the 18th overall pick. Another notable observation from this year’s PNSP scores is that Brandon Ingram ranked 10th. Ingram was likely a consensus top -two pick across all front offices in the NBA, but PNSP sees Ingram as a project due to his lack of size (weight), poor college free throw shooting, and underwhelming rebounding numbers for his position. Conversely, Dejounte Murray was voted biggest steal by his fellow rookies, and PNSP agrees with Murray being an excellent value pick by the San Antonio Spurs at 29th overall (ranks 4th by PNSP).
Two top 10 picks did not make PNSP’s top 20 list – Kris Dunn (42.0) and Buddy Hield (49.1). While PNSP does penalize prospects for playing multiple college seasons, there have been prospects that played multiple college seasons and still scored highly by PNSP (e.g., Draymond Green 76.1, Gorgui Dieng 79.9, etc). PNSP does not like Kris Dunn’s poor free throw shooting and high-risk style, nor Buddy Hield’s lack of production beyond outside shooting.
Overall, PNSP does not identify many top-end prospects 2016 NBA draft outside of Ben Simmons, but believes there is value later in the draft. Note that each player’s actual draft position is shown in parentheses.
| Rk | Player (Draft pos) | School | Rating |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Ben Simmons (1) | LSU | 91.9 |
| 2 | Henry Ellenson (18) | Marquette | 91.1 |
| 3 | Isaiah Whitehead (42) | Seton Hall | 83.0 |
| 4 | Dejounte Murray (29) | Washington | 81.7 |
| 5 | Wade Baldwin (17) | Vanderbilt | 76.3 |
| 6 | Jamal Murray (7) | Kentucky | 73.8 |
| 7 | Jakob Poeltl (9) | Utah | 73.1 |
| 8 | Jaylen Brown (3) | California | 72.6 |
| 9 | Denzel Valentine (14) | Michigan State | 70.1 |
| 10 | Brandon Ingram (2) | Duke | 69.4 |
| 11 | Patrick McCaw (38) | UNLV | 66.8 |
| 12 | Malik Beasley (19) | Florida State | 65.8 |
| 13 | A.J. Hammons (46) | Purdue | 65.6 |
| 14 | Domantas Sabonis (11) | Gonzaga | 63.5 |
| 15 | Stephen Zimmerman (41) | UNLV | 62.1 |
| 16 | Diamond Stone (40) | Maryland | 61.3 |
| 17 | Kay Felder (54) | Oakland | 57.9 |
| 18 | Marquesse Chriss (8) | Washington | 57.9 |
| 19 | Malachi Richardson (22) | Syracuse | 57.9 |
| 20 | Deyonta Davis (31) | Michigan State | 54.4 |
*The 2016 NBA draft class was removed from our data and predicted on out-of-sample.
For a detailed explanation of PNSP click Here